By LetsRun.com - After a holiday break, we resume with our "The Week That Was" column that recaps the major happenings in the running world the previous week. As the track and field world returns to action from a holiday breather many of the headlines this week were off the track.

The Week That Was: Dec 31 - Jan 6, 2008 - Week 1` of 2008

Political Unrest Leads To Violence In Kenya
The escalating violence and instability in Kenya dominated the headlines in the first week of 2008 as the new year got off to a inauspicious start in the cradle of distance running. On December 27, Kenya held its presidential elections and incumbent Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner. Since then, it's become apparent the vote-count was very much flawed and the outrage over the unfair elections has broken down in many areas into near tribal warfare.

Disturbingly, the violence was at its worse in the Rift Valley. The Rift Valley is where the most notorious violent incident occurred, as a mob of mostly Kalenjin (almost all of the famous runners from Kenya are Kalenjin) barricaded and then torched a church with approximately 200 Kikuyu in it, resulting in 50 people being burned alive, just outside of the training mecca of Eldoret.

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Prominent runners weren't immune to the violence as 1988 Olympian Lucas Sang was murdered in a separate incident. For a photo of Sang, please click here. Luke Kibet, who won the 2007 world championships in the marathon, was lucky to survive a stoning attack.

So far over 400 people have reportedly lost their lives in the violence. Things have started to get better and it looks like Kibaki and his defeated rival will meet this week to talk about possible solutions. Nothing short of...